


Blood Ties

by PotterheadAvengerDemigod



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Baby Teddy Lupin, Cute, Cute Ending, Draco Malfoy & Harry Potter Friendship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Family Issues, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Good Draco Malfoy, Good Narcissa Black Malfoy, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, I just needed Draco and Teddy and Andromeda interaction, Kinda, Light Angst, POV Draco Malfoy, Post-War, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 05:26:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17016573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PotterheadAvengerDemigod/pseuds/PotterheadAvengerDemigod
Summary: It takes Draco well over a month to gather the courage to ask his mother whether the rumours were true.“Mother?” He asks, quiet. “Is it true- that Aunt Andromeda’s daughter had a child?”/OR/ The one where Draco Malfoy is a good cousin and nephew and just wants to help.





	Blood Ties

**Author's Note:**

> So... my first HP fic ever, if you can believe it! I hope it's okay, I don't have much -if any- practice writing the HP characters at all!

It takes Draco a good while to gather the courage to ask his mother what he wants to know.

He sits at the dining table at dinner, a month after the war, alone except for Mother. It’s quiet in the Manor these days, with the few servants that they’ve kept, and Father unwell. Father has been quiet lately, and Draco’s considering suggesting that both him and Mother take a trip out to their beach house in Spain- maybe the peace and fresh air will help.

But before that, Draco has to know-

“Mother?” He asks, quiet, meeting her gaze across the table. “Is it true- that Aunt Andromeda’s daughter had a child?”

Draco sees the way his mother’s shoulders stiffen, the way her eyes darken, and he thinks he’s made a horrible mistake. Mother has never been as crazed about blood purity as Father was, but she still felt strongly enough about it to ignore the sister that she’d grown up with for decades. But Draco had thought- after the war, now that their family name was almost gone and they had little -if any- good reputation to uphold any longer… He’d thought she would at least be somewhat amenable to repairing burned bridges.

And Draco can’t really find it in himself to leave a young child alone with no family but a single grandmother, if the rumours were true. Even if the child wasn’t a pureblood.

But Mother’s gaze is sharp and cold, and Draco readies himself to apologise and subside, to pretend that he hadn’t said a thing. At worst, he could go behind Mother’s back and offer some help to his aunt- financial aid, at least, if she wouldn’t accept anything more. Draco had nothing if not money now, now that he was almost entirely in charge of the Malfoy fortune due to Father being… unwell. Besides, although Aunt Bella had never liked him insofar as Draco could tell, her will had left him most of her personal fortune, Merlin knows why.

Then Mother’s shoulders sag, just a little, and she nods. “Yes, young Edward, I believe his name is. Your cousin Nymphadora had him just months before.”

“Will… you try to make amends, Mother?”

His mother’s eyes darken again, but she looks far more resigned than she does angry, and Draco thinks there is sadness in the lines of her face too.

“Perhaps,” she says, lips twisting. “It has been far too long, and I do not blame Andromeda if she will have nothing to do with me.”

His mother is silent for a long moment then, and Draco turns back to his dinner, cutting absently into his fish as he keeps his attention on his mother. After a while she turns back to her food too, and Draco deems that the end of the conversation, despite Mother not having truly given him a reply. Nonetheless,, at least she has confirmed the existence of Draco’s new cousin, and that is enough for him.

Draco nearly misses the soft, “It would be nice to see Drome again,” that slips past his mother’s lips.

* * *

It takes Draco another two months to get the courage to pay Aunt Andromeda a visit, and he doesn’t want to admit that the time he spent trying to find a suitable present for an infant was mostly procrastination.

But it is a bright, sunny day out when Draco finally brings himself to visit that small cottage, a basket of toys in hand.

He hesitates outside the door for a long moment, one gloved hand raised to knock, but doubts begin to flood his mind.

He’s a Malfoy, he’s been raised among Death Eaters and tainted by the Dark Mark. Why should Andromeda look at him with anything but disgust? He’s the son of the sister who’d abandoned her without even the slightest protest, the nephew of the woman who’d killed her daughter. He’s done nothing to deserve kindness, especially not from a woman who has lost as much as Andromeda Tonks has to the war.

He lowers his hand, and turns to walk away.

“Teddy? Teddy, where are you going-” the harried voice halts Draco in his tracks, and, oh, Aunt Andromeda  _ does  _ sound similar to Mother, even in the way the concern for her grandson comes through clearly in her tone. “Come back here, you little rascal-”

And then the door opens.

Both Draco and the woman who’d opened the door freeze, staring at each other, and Draco can see the family resemblance.

Draco’d always been told he looks like his father, but he knows he has his mother’s face shape, and nose, most of his facial features he gets from her, really- and Draco realises that the woman before him shares a good majority of those features as well.

She also looks almost terrifyingly similar to Aunt Bella, with high cheekbones and a sharp jaw, full lips. But the sun shining down on them bleaches the brown of her hair to an almost tawny gold, and the set of her eyes are wide and soft, even if they are marred by deep bruises, a sign of the sleepless nights that have plagued every person that has survived this war.

Then there’s a tug on the basket Draco’s holding, and Draco starts, breaking their eye contact to look down.

His little cousin is there, sitting in the middle of the dirt path with his pudgy hands wrapped around one of the small stuffed bears that Draco had brought, and even as Draco watches, Teddy lifts the bear between small hands and begins chewing on its ear.

Andromeda lets out a small sound, an aborted gasp, and Draco doesn’t think he’s imagining the tremble in her voice when she says, “Ted-Teddy? Darling, come back here, please-”

Draco tries to tell himself the way his eyes sting is just the infernal dust that floats everywhere in a rundown countryside like this.

Of course, what was he expecting? Of course, his Aunt would be afraid, why would she ever accept him? He’d been a part of the group that had killed her entire family and left her alone to single-handedly raise her month-old grandson.

She would never trust him, and Draco didn’t think she was wrong to do so.

Surreptitiously, Draco glances down to ensure his left forearm is covered.

“Teddy?” Aunt Andromeda says again, voice shaking more obviously now. “Teddy, please, come back to grandma, leave the man alone-”

Teddy doesn’t listen, and simply continues to sit there in the dirt, chewing wholeheartedly on his new stuffed bear.

Draco’s heart clenches, but he knows when he’s not wanted.

“It- It’s alright, Aunt Andromeda, I’ll just- I’ll head off, now-”

The woman’s head snaps up at the address, dark eyes widening. Draco nearly slaps himself. That was stupid,  _ stupid,  _ why did he call her Aunt-

“What did you call me?” The woman asks, soft, uncertain, and Draco’s shoulders draw up.

“Aunt-” he starts, keeping his voice from shaking through sheer willpower, and he sees Aunt Andromeda’s gaze fix on the basket of toys in his hand.

“And- those are for- for Teddy?”

Draco nods soundlessly, and sees his aunt’s shoulder’s tense, before a determined light comes into her eyes.

“W-Well, come on then,” she says, coming forward to scoop Teddy into her arms, before turning back towards her house. Draco can hear the badly masked tremor in her voice.

“Come on in,” his aunt says, and Draco swallows, eyes burning.

* * *

The months after see Draco visiting Aunt Andromeda many, many more times, after that first awkward meeting where neither of them had quite known what to say, but then Teddy had spit up all over Draco’s coat, and well, after that it had just been a rush to get Draco a replacement coat before they’d both realised that they could simply cast a quick  _ tergeo.  _ Then they’d laughed for a bit, and it had been like the ice had finally broken.

Every time Draco goes to visit Aunt Andromeda, he wonders at her living conditions. She’s barely getting by on her husband’s pension and the meagre funds the Ministry provided for her daughter’s death. Her cottage is well looked after, yes, clean and tidy and neat, but it is also small, and rundown, and in desperate need of refurbishment that Aunt Andromeda simply cannot afford.

And yet she refuses to accept his money every time Draco offers. The house is a little more rundown every time Draco sees it, and Aunt Andromeda looks a little more exhausted every time he drops by, but still she doesn’t accept his money.

Draco doesn’t understand why- it’s not like he couldn’t afford it, and it wasn’t like Aunt didn’t need it. He could help, so why didn’t Aunt Andromeda accept it?

But she always told him she was happy with how her life was, and she had enough to cover all her’s and Teddy’s needs. She didn’t need his money, she was happy as she was.

But it pained Draco to see her having to raise Teddy alone and have to balance finances as well.

So Draco tries to find ways to sneak her money.

First, he tries to convince Gringotts to allow him to deposit money in Aunt Andromeda’s vault occasionally, but the goblins simply look at him as if he’s daft and ignore the request.

Then he tries to surreptitiously leave galleons in hard-to-find places when he visits, but Aunt Andromeda finds out about it soon enough, and then she makes him stop.

So he tries to pulls some strings with the few connections the Malfoy name still has, tries to strike deals with grocers around the area to decrease the prices Aunt pays for her necessities, for him to foot the excess, but most of the salespeople refuse.

Finally Draco settles upon drafting official-looking letters, falsified to look like Ministry documents, and sends Aunt Andromeda money in the form of reparations to war victims.

Finally, Aunt Andromeda takes his money, and Draco sees how much it's helping her, after he next visits and she offers him a relieved smile and talks about how she’d used some of the war reparations from the Ministry to renovate the house and start a small garden, even bought some new robes for herself and new toys for Teddy. Draco sees the relief in her eyes when her financial burden lifts, and he can’t help giving himself a little pat on the back.

It feels good to help, even in such a small way.

* * *

Of course, Draco’s not daft enough to think that he’d be able to trick her forever, but Aunt Andromeda is too busy taking care of Teddy to realise that she’s the only one receiving these “reparations”, and Draco’s careful to steer any conversation they have away from dangerous territory.

Draco prays the charade keeps up for long enough that she’s at least comfortable and has a good amount of savings.

He hadn’t expected it to fall through because of  _ this,  _ though.

Draco’s over for tea one afternoon, Teddy in his lap as he plays with his cousin, Aunt Andromeda telling him proudly about how Teddy had recently spoken his first word- a garbled “gramma”.

Teddy’s still as messy a child as ever, a thin line of drool down his chin he chews on Draco’s sleeves, and  _ really,  _ Draco should find himself putting up a stronger objection to getting baby spit all over him and his tailored clothing, but he can’t bring himself to say anything when Teddy lets out a happy gurgle and begins gnawing at Draco’s fingers.

Then there’s a knock on the door, and Draco starts. Aunt Andromeda has never had visitors when Draco’s around, although Draco knows that she keeps in contact with most of the people who’d fought in the war, and he knows that Potter is Teddy’s godfather, but Draco’s never seen Aunt Andromeda receive a guest while he was in the house before.

“Hey, Andromeda,” a voice comes echoing from the entranceway as Aunt Andromeda opens the door. “I had the rest of the day off, so I came to see Teddy.”

Draco stiffens. He’d know that voice anywhere.

Merlin, what Draco wouldn’t give to disappear right now.

“I’m sorry it’s been a while since I last dropped by- we've been bogged down by this blasted case in the Ministry, and we’ve just wrapped it up. I like what you’ve done with the place, you did some renovations?”

“It’s good to see you, Harry, and yes, I did,” Aunt Andromeda replies. “Used the money from the Ministry’s war reparations- that was a relief to get, honestly-”

Oh, no. This wasn’t going to turn out well-

“War reparations?”

Oh, Merlin’s beard, there was no way Potter didn’t know that those so-called “war reparations” were fake- Aunt Andromeda was surely going to find out now-

“I don’t recall Kingsley ever saying anything abou-  _ Malfoy?  _ What the  _ bloody _ hell are  _ you  _ doing here?”

Oh, sweet Merlin, it’d just gotten a thousand times worse.

Draco steels himself and pulls his expression into a blank mask. “Visiting my aunt and cousin, Potter. What about you?”

“Visiting my godson,” Potter snipes back, green eyes blazing, and Draco sighs. He doesn’t want to cause trouble, not with Andromeda watching, and definitely not with Teddy still perched in his lap, but it looks like Potter isn’t going to give him the option.

But then Aunt Andromeda steps between them, tone warning as she says,  _ “Boys.” _

Immediately, both Potter and himself subside.

In his lap, Teddy continues gnawing at Draco’s fingers.

“Now, Harry,” Draco’s aunt says pleasantly, clearly ignoring the tension in the air. “What was that you were saying about the war reparations?”

Potter shakes himself, and turns back to Aunt Andromeda. “Ah, yeah, I’m afraid that the Ministry  _ hasn’t  _ sent out any such reparations, Andromeda, or at least not that Kingsley has told me.”

Draco sees his aunt freeze, sees the cogs turning in her mind, and curses inwardly.

Well, the charade is up, then.

“If the money wasn’t from the Ministry, then where on Earth-  _ Draco!” _

Draco sighs.

“I’ve told you countless times that I don’t need your money, Draco,” Aunt Andromeda says, shaking her head, and Draco flushes.

“You needed it far more than I did,” Draco defends, gesturing to the room around them. “Besides, you’ve put it to far better use than I could have had, Aunt. If not it would just have sat in Gringotts collecting dust. I’m happy to have helped, really.”

Beside Aunt Andromeda, Potter stares with wide eyes. Those green eyes that the world loved are shining with disbelief, and Draco has never needed, or even wanted,  _ Harry Potter’s  _ opinion or judgement, but the sheer shock in those eyes somehow cuts deeper than Draco had expected them to.

He’d known Potter hated him -that he spoke up for Draco and his mother at their trial proved nothing but that Potter truly had a saviour complex- but the fact that this man, that their world heralded as nothing but good, as the embodiment of all things right and just and heroic, could not believe that Draco Malfoy had good in him…

It stung. It really did.

Because Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy would never be friends, and Draco did not doubt that they would ever be more than somewhat friendly acquaintances, but the world believed that Potter was  _ good,  _ and that the Malfoys were bad.

And Draco got more than enough scoffs and glares and hexes thrown his way just walking down Diagon Alley. He didn’t need them here too- not in his Aunt’s house, not in this safe space where he’d been coming to for months now, not here where the war didn’t matter, where sides weren’t taken and grudges weren’t upheld, not here in front of his little infant cousin with the bright turquoise hair and the wide, trusting eyes.

Even if Teddy was barely past a year in age and incapable of understanding what was going on, he didn’t want his little baby cousin exposed to vitriol before he could form his own opinions.

Selfish as it was, Draco didn’t want to be  _ Death Eater,  _ or  _ murderer,  _ or even  _ Malfoy _ to Teddy. He just wanted to be  _ Draco,  _ the quiet cousin who came to visit once in a while, always bearing some new toy or entertainment.

Here, he wanted to be just Draco, the boy who came by and sat down for tea with his aunt and talked about how the radishes in the garden were growing, or how Teddy was growing up, how the new renovations made the house look far airier, and safer for a young child like Teddy who was just starting to walk by himself.

“ _ Malfoy  _ gave you money?” Potter asks, and years of listening for intonations and hidden meanings and the swift, cutting attack of words that are not said leave Draco with the uncanny ability to hear the incredulity in Potter’s voice, the unsaid  _ “A Malfoy giving charity to a blood traitor and a werewolf’s child?” _

Draco would like to think that he hid his wince well enough, but somehow Aunt Andromeda’s eyes land on him, sharp and clear, and Draco wonders if the months of reprieve at her house have softened his defenses.

But Aunt Andromeda turns back to Potter instead, and the smile on her lips is small, a little stilted, but real.

“He’s been offering for months now,” she says. “Every time he visits. He’s been helping me look after Teddy when I’m hard-pressed to as well- he’s good with him.”

There’s a pause in which Aunt Andromeda holds Potter’s gaze, while Draco looks resolutely away, and then Aunt’s voice continues, almost teasing when she says, “He’s better than you, at least. At least he knows not to lift a baby into the air by their arms.”

Draco startles when Aunt Andromeda laughs a little, and sees a bright flush bloom across Potter’s cheeks.

“It was one time!” Potter defends, looking strangely vulnerable. ‘I’ve learned since then!”

The mood in his aunt’s cottage is far lighter now, now that Potter is no longer looking doubtful eyes, and Draco finds himself chuckling just a little as well.

“Really, Potter?” The words spill from his lips unbidden, a mirror of their Hogwarts rivalry with none of the malice, and Draco sees Potter’s gaze snap to his.

Draco meets those green eyes, and refuses to be cowed. “I would have thought the great hero of the wizarding world would know better than that. Are you truly that bad with children?”

The words are razor-edged, but his tone holds no animosity.

Potter stares at him for moments longer, and it’s almost like the world holds its breath, waiting for his reaction.

Then Potter pouts -yes,  _ pouts-  _ and throws his hands in the air.

“It really  _ was  _ only the once!” He cries, and the smile tugging at his lips is one that Draco has seen aimed at countless others, but never at him. Not until now.

In Draco’s lap, Teddy gurgles cheerfully, coating Draco’s cuffs with saliva once again, and Draco can’t help but smile down at his cousin. Under his gaze, Teddy’s hair abruptly goes a stunning lilac, then an eye-searing ultramarine, before it subsides back to turquoise.

“See, Potter?” Draco says, almost triumphant. “Teddy agrees.”

“Siding against your own godfather!” Potter says, looking at Teddy with betrayed eyes. Teddy burbles guilelessly, and drools onto Draco’s sleeves even more.

“Well, I  _ am  _ his cousin, Potter.”

Potter’s gaze turns up to meet Draco’s, and he straightens in his seat. He blinks once, almost considering, and his lips twist in thought.

Then he holds out a hand.

“Call me Harry.”

Draco looks at the proffered hand, then looks back up at that steady green gaze.

He takes the hand. “Likewise, Pot- Harry.”

**Author's Note:**

> [My Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/_dreamdweller/)  
> Pop over and say hi!


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